Maximum Ride : Epic!
by nathan-p
Summary: A crossover... and a look at the lighter side of science. In other words, lunacy with a funny hat on. T for swearing, possible intimacy.
1. Part the First

Introduction:

This is the spiffy new edition of the trailer, edited so all the parentheses end and all the characters are in the right houses. And so the origin story makes sense, I no longer claim to own Max & co., and so the Epilogue isn't all lonely and disjointed at the bottom – that is, I edited it.

Last night I was "working" on my Spanish homework, and, as usual, got broadsided by a Plot Idea which has broadsided me before. However, this time it was Serious and Dramatic and… well, you know how fanfiction is. For this I thank Raptor Jesus, for he advises me on short skirts.

Warnings: Curse words, sexytimes, and Good!Science. (Not much sexytimes, though… frownyface.) Oh, and I don't own Max & co.; damn that 16th amendment!

* * *

My name is Anna Sinclair; I doubt you've met me. Unless, that is, you live in the area just south of Denver, in which case hello and I'm sorry about disrupting your routine. (By the way, if you've been reading about an 'angel' in any tabloids [especially one in the Denver area, that was me.) I'm sixteen, I have wings, and that's all the information I'm comfortable giving out about myself. 

I live with my boyfriend and one-half of my pair of legal guardians – the winged half, Adolph, spelled with a ph, as he insists on repeating. I call Shane my boyfriend because it's convenient and, well, he is. We call ourselves the Four-Man Band: token cripple, token chick, token gay dude, and token normal.

Not so long ago, I was surfing the Internet and I heard the phone ring. Adolph thumped off the couch and answered it. He listened for a moment and then turned to me.

"Nathan," he said.

Being that the poor man _is_ our token cripple, I assumed the worst.

Adolph listened again. "Okay, I'll put you on speakerphone for Anna."

Adolph hit the little button on the phone, and Nathan's voice crackled out of the invisi-speaker.

"Anna? Get in the car; Adolph's driving. Adolph, get the beeohbee and put it in the trunk. Is Shane there?"[_Ed. – a beeohbee is a BugOut Bag – bag of survival necessities_.

I looked at Adolph, raised an eyebrow. "No," I said. "He went to the store."

"Ah," said Nathan. The line went silent and for a moment I thought he'd hung up. Then he said, "I have a debt to pay. A… friend sent me a letter, and I just got it. He sent it to my… old address. Come get me." He hung up.

Just then, before I could move towards the door, someone honked a car horn outside. Adolph caught my gaze, and I heard his voice say, _Shane!_

No doubt. I went for the front door while Adolph went to get the beeohbee from the closet.

"Come on!" Definitely Shane.

I ran out to the car, Adolph trailing behind me, and got in the backseat. "Looks like a change of plans," I said to Adolph.

"What?" said Shane.

"Just drive," said Adolph. "Na – Doctor _Prescott_'s apartment."

Thanks to Shane's driving (comparable only to dear departed Jake's in speed and scaring the cops), we got to the apartment in record time. True to his word, Nathan was on the steps, complete with – oh no – suitcase and crutches. The crutches I'd been expecting – token cripple, right? – but not the suitcase.

Adolph got out and put Nathan's suitcase in the trunk, then waited for Nathan to get in the backseat next to me and put his crutches in like a metal seatbelt over the both of us.

"I-25, Shane," said Nathan, "and I suppose I owe the three of you an explanation – _especially_ you, Anna."

There was a perfectly-timed pause, and then Nathan started in.

"I knew this guy back in the eighties, and he's finally called in a favor I owe him."

"You need me why?" I asked.

"We need a Judas."

"Ex_cuse_ me?"

"Someone to infiltrate this bunch of mutant… weirdos running around."

"Well, why me, not Shane, he's legal."

"You have wings; I'd get Bird, but…"

Bird was the third member of our winged-people Three Man Band, but she ran off a while ago. "Then why do you have to come?" I asked.

I heard him say, _Prove I'm not the cripple_ but he cut himself off and said, "We need a… villain to get them to meet you. I fit the bill of Evil Scientist, but we sadly lack wolf-people, so it's me."

Shane guffawed (and I'm entirely justified in using that verb – when I say guffawed, he _guffawed_) and said, "What, they think _scientists_ are _evil_? I pity the poor geologists."

"Dude, not funny," I said. "Pity the _physicists._" Our little injoke.

"So I'm sending you to Arizona," Nathan continued. "I'll be accompanying you."

I wanted to ask why we were (presumably) taking a plane there, when I could get there in under a day by myself and he could drive, and why I couldn't just fly alone. Instead, I settled for saying, "Hey, so two questions. One, where are the ticks coming from, two, why are we stopping these nuts?"

With typical Nathan straight-facedness, he said, "Because these… _cork-nuts_ are trying to overthrow the system, and The Man – that being me and my friend – won't stand for it."

Assuming that he was just going to _conjure_ plane tickets, I giggled under my breath. Arizona! People with wings! Air travel!

"I say bring it." I said.

"Nice attitude," deadpanned Shane.

Damn him.

* * *

Epilogue: 

I apologize for the Editor's Note, but really – a footnote makes you scroll down here, then back up, and I hate doing that. If this were a comic, I could just write it in some white space, but no…

Anyway, I've fixed some canon issues and made the Call more sensible, as well as fixing some general problems.

Please note the following things if you're curious: the geologist joke is one I recently came up with and have finally dragged into the light – as such, use it at will in MR parodies, etc. "Cork-nut" as an insult has been borrowed from _Oryx and Crake_, which I adore. Clunkiness in dialogue, description, voicing, etc. is all my own fault, as is the let's-throw-darts-at-the-map location of Max & co. A first chapter will more than likely follow, as I think this will be a nice idle pursuit to occupy my remaining October. Said chapter will explain the backstory of these OCs – a justified infodump, as Anna feels guilty about jumping into things – and hopefully bring us up to speed on the activities of Max & co.

I'd like to note that if you see an element from one of your fics in here and I have forgetfully forgotten to mention you, mention it, and I'll credit you. I don't intend to mock anybody, just to lovingly make fun of our shared fandom.

This seems, also, to be the first Max Ride fanfiction which has the MCs acting as villains. To which I note that this is not a bash!fic. I have nothing against Max & co., except possibly Max's enduring happiness. Then again, I envy all relentlessly happy people – envy, and _fear_.

Don't forget to flame.


	2. Part Deux

Introduction:

My changes don't seem to be "taking" on Part One, so rest assured… all those dangling parentheses are meant to possess endings. Fear not.

This one I owe also to Raptor Jesus viz. short skirts, and also to Muraki, that magnificent bastard, viz. awesome peppy fanvids. He has the scariest fangirls with the best taste in music…

Warnings are the same.

* * *

Plane rides are _long_.

Security was a horror anyway; Nathan produced tickets from nowhere, and we _still_ both almost got strip-searched. Nathan convinced them I was harmless before they got my clothes off, but the poor man still got a pat-down. Hey, at least the train to our terminal was neato.

Plane food sucks; I tell you this with all the experience of one with a really high metabolism due to her bird genes, and who has thus been forced to eat some really nasty stuff in the interest of remaining upright. I've dug worse McDonald's out of dumpsters – although, to credit the plane food people, the McDonald's was getting kind of iffy and moldy.

Nathan turned out, no surprise, to be a little kid when faced by heights, to the point that we had to change seats so that he was by the window. Luckily, I didn't knee anyone in the back by accident – due to his crutches, we got priority seating by the bulkhead. He still stared resolutely out the window the entire flight, occasionally tapping me on the shoulder when he saw something interesting.

It's kind of… sad, I guess, and fascinating too, the way that he's a super-brilliant scientist, yet he has no permanent job, and stares at clouds instead of, I don't know, reading or listening to music while on a plane. I never knew him before his… accident, so I don't know if this is what he's always been like. I wish I could ask Adolph about it.

I suppose we're just about the weirdest family to exist. One telepath. One girl with wings. One brilliant scientist. And, of course, one normal kid. We'd make a great sitcom, but who'd listen to the idea?

Me, Anna, the one in a million young amnesiac who remembers zip, zero, _nada_ about her past. I just sort of… woke up last October, in circumstances I might tell you about later.

Then Adolph, our resident telepath. First person ever to be given wings, in the late eighties – 1986, to be exact. His telepathy rubs off on us a bit.

Then Shane, the normal. My favorite redhead, who usually pulls the "sarcastic comment" or "witty reply" card in conversation. And who claims to be a ninja from time to time, but sensibly avoids it when actually challenged to a fight.

And then Nathan. Best described as a brilliant ditz. No, really – if I asked him to do my biology homework, he'd be done in five minutes before he wandered off trying to remember where he left the car keys. He's apparently my uncle, but I have no idea if he's lying or not.

Our plane came into the airport, and suddenly, it was hot. Not the inside of the plane, but once we got to the terminal, it was _hot_.

Nathan had wisely taken his suitcase as a carryon, and I had no luggage at all, so we just went for the rental car desks.

He stopped in the middle of the terminal and said, "Okay. Pick whatever false name you want, but lie as little as you can. My… friend says that the little blond girl and the tall brunette girl are the real heads of the group. Guard your thoughts if you can; the blondie reads minds… and _controls_ them. Other than that… pray. I'll be along soon. Now go, I've put directions in your pocket."

Rather puzzled, I wandered towards the doors.

As is usual for me, I was accosted by a friendly old lady who asked if I was okay.

"Yes, I'm just looking for my… cousin," I said, improvising madly. "He has a grey sedan, and he said he'd be here soon." I smiled. "I'm here to see my grandparents and he offered to come get me."

Thank God, after that she wandered off.

I stepped out through the doors. Whoo God, it was hot.

I hopped a city bus, picking it at random. I didn't dare yet investigate my pocket to see where Nathan was sending me, and so I suspected I was going in the wrong direction.

Once the bus had gotten going, I took the paper out of my pocket and considered it, trying to look as if I were simply investigating an innocuous piece of paper.

Yep, it was an address: 710 Iron Springs Road, Prescott, Arizona.

I sighed. And no map. Of course no map. Why no goddamn map?

And a map promptly _bloomed_ in the air in front of me. It was a fight to keep my jaw from dropping.

I quickly pushed aside my disbelief, because according to every science fiction / fantasy novel I'd ever read (which totaled up to exactly five – hey, I'd had just one year!), once you quit believing, it goes away. No. That was Peter Pan.

Prescott, Prescott, Prescott. Where the hell was Prescott?

The map panned and showed me a little red dot in the airport, then displayed a label over it telling me it was in a little coffee shop.

Oh, very funny. I wanted the _town_, not my _friend_.

I swear I heard it say sorry, and it panned again, then zoomed in on a town. Text scrolled across it, telling me that I was about 100 miles from Prescott.

Then it beeped at me, and I heard the bus driver repeat, "Next stop Nineteenth Street."

The map chirped again. Here? It chirped.

Right, I suppose that means yes.

It chirped at me.

Damn map had a sense of humor; it nearly made me miss my stop. I got off the bus at Nineteenth and stood there for a moment, trying to look pensive.

The map chirped and showed me a dotted line that went into the alley, then _up_ the building… Wait. It wanted me to get airborne.

It chirped yes.

"Right," I muttered, and went down the alley. I climbed up the fire escape, trying not to clatter or fall, or be distracted by the map.

Once I was on the roof, the map showed me a line to the edge of the roof, then going up and north-west. Okay.

I walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down into the street. Funny – no one ever looks _up_. Thank God I'm not afraid of heights –

-- and then, suddenly, like always, I was airborne and circling skywards. Interesting how that works. It's kind of like… I don't know… like… well, I don't know. Struck dumb. Where you can't think about it, and then suddenly you're _there_.

The map directed me to go northwest, but mostly north. I almost thanked it, and then, once I realized what I was doing, almost fell out of the air. The thing appears in front of me from nowhere, and now I was treating it like a person.

"She." it beeped.

"You're a she?" I said. "Sorry."

It chirped a rising, pleased tone.

"You have a name or do I just call you Map?"

It chirped a falling, horrified note.

"Hmm. I think you're a Liz."

No.

"Mel?"

No again.

"Hmm… Evelyn?" I was running out of girl names.

"Margaret? Lynn?" I sighed. "That's all I've got."

I flew in silence for a moment before saying, "Can I just call you Nick, then?"

It chirped a happy, pleased, rising tone.

"Okay. Nick it is then."

Nick beeped. Was I there already?

Yes.

"Would you _please_ choose whether you're going to beep at me or just project your thoughts?"

"Okay," beeped Nick.

Then Nick beeped at me again.

"You're right over it."

Two little blue dots were off to my west. "Do I go find those?"

"Yes," beeped Nick. "Don't worry about putting me away; they can't see me."

"Putting you away?"

"Yes. Like the minimize button on a computer. I don't stop, but I get out of your vision."

"Oh. Thanks." I giggled, gliding after the little blue dots, which I could faintly make out to be two people. "You know, I just realized that this morning, I was surfing the Internet and thinking about my grades. Now I'm trying to infiltrate a mutant group and I'm talking to a map. Could it get any _crazier_?"

"Oh, yes," said Nick. "For instance, there could be killer clowns around you."

"True," I said. "You've got a sense of humor. I like that."

"Good," said Nick. "I'm going to put myself away now." Nick folded up like a physical map, and tucked it – _her_self away.

So when I almost glided into the two of them, I wasn't surprised at all when the first words out of anyone's mouth weren't exactly "Happy Birthday". If you know what I mean.

* * *

Epilogue:

So, part deux. If you're actually from Arizona, I apologize. I'm not, and I B.S.ed everything you see… well, except for the relative locations.

My God, it's taken me two chapters to get the Flock in, and they're the antagonists.

Notes for this one: Muraki-the-magnificent-bastard hails from Yami no Matsuei. Nick is the comedy relief. And then of course, Arizona belongs to itself.

Reviews are pleasant.


End file.
